The Refugee Action Coalition says
there is no future for the asylum seekers still stuck on
Nauru, following the announcement that a funding deal for
the Regional Processing Centre has been reached with
Australia.
Nauru’s President David Adeang made the
announcement last month in parliament.
A Nauru
government report states that, of the 93 transferees on
Nauru, four have been granted refugee status, and 89 asylum
seekers are undergoing the appeals process.
The
refugee coalition’s spokesperson Ian Rintoul said options
are very limited for the asylum seekers.
“If there’s
four people have been found to be refugees, and the rest are
actually going through an appeal process… it’s an
indication that there’s some very real problem I think, with
the processing on Nauru.”
When asked what the
long-term funding arrangement meant for those living there,
he said they have no future.
“People that are on Nauru
are there indefinitely,” he said.
“That’s one of the
big problems, is that the government has talked about
long-term funding for Nauru, but they’ve got no third
country resettlement options.”
Rintoul said the
Australian offshore detention position is unlikely to change
despite Saturday’s election.
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Australian governments
have been sending people seeking asylum to Nauru, and also,
previously, to PNG, under policy the country’s boarder
protection policy.
Its regional processing and
resettlement stance is aimed at deterring people trying to
reach the country illegally by boats.
The Australian
government has maintained this position since 19 July 2013,
that anyone who attempts to get into Australia illegally by
boat would ever settle in the country.
Rintoul said
Labor and the Liberals continue to sing from the same
songsheet about refugees.
He said a new rule will
allow Australia to remove not just those arriving illegally
by sea, but those presently in the country.
A
parliament summary said this bill – passed late last year –
would allow the minister to issue written directions to a
“removal pathway non-citizen” to facilitate their removal
from Australia; introduce criminal penalties for refusing or
failing to comply with such directions; and empower the
Minister to reverse a protection finding in relation to a
lawful non-citizen who is on a removal pathway.
“The
new deportation legislation allows the government of the day
to remove some of those people to Nauru, and the Labor
government was quite happy to cooperate with the liberals,
use their votes to push that legislation through,” Rintoul
said.
“Certainly, the refugee movement in Australia
will be looking to take up the protest movement again after
the election on Saturday, to push the issue of refugees,
their human rights and a welcome-refugee policy that
desperately needs to be implemented in Australia, and
including that is to end offshore detention.”
Earlier
this year, the UN Human Rights Commission published its
decisions on two
cases involving refugees who complained about their
treatment at Nauru’s regional processing
facility.
The committee stated that Australia
remained responsible for the health and welfare of refugees
and asylum seekers detained in Nauru.
“A state party
cannot escape its human rights responsibility when
outsourcing asylum processing to another state,” committee
member Mahjoub El Haiba said.
After the decisions were
released, a spokesperson for the Australian Home Affairs
Department said “it
has been the Australian Government’s consistent position
that Australia does not exercise effective control over
regional processing centres”.
Canberra opposed the
allegations put to the committee, saying there was no prima
facie substantiation that the alleged violations in Nauru
had occurred within Australia’s jurisdiction, but the UN
committee disagreed.
Meanwhile, the governments of
Australia and New Zealand formlised
a refugee settlement arrangement in March 2022. Under
the arrangement, New Zealand will settle up to 150 refugees
per year until June 2025 (up to 450 in three
years).
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